


A Bear of Very Little Brain

by Salchat



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Winnie-the-Pooh - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Honey, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23106172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salchat/pseuds/Salchat
Summary: Rodney has an unusual day.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

It was all Madison’s fault, thought Rodney. And then he changed his mind, not because laying the blame on a small child wasn’t well within his moral framework, but because it was simply much more satisfying, and also easily justifiable, to blame his sister. It was Jeannie’s fault; the blame rested, quite firmly, squarely and naturally, on her shoulders.

Deciding to spend his very few, very precious days’ leave selflessly fulfilling his familial obligations, Rodney had found himself babysitting a bug-ridden Madison, the husband (What was his name? Kaleb?), being out of town at a conference (Did English professors even have those? What for? Inventing new words?) and Jeannie herself flitting off to deal with a friend’s existential crisis or divorce or something.

Sheppard had tagged along, (sensibly avoiding his relatives), and so, the two of them had sat, for what seemed like days, one either side of a sniffing, sneezing, infectious child, being forcibly subjected to endless Winnie-the-Pooh videos. And yes, he did mean VHS tapes, which somehow added insult to injury. To heap additional insult onto said injury, John claimed to have had ‘a good time’, which Rodney could well believe. He had monopolised the large bowl of mixed Funyuns and Cheetos, mechanically and rhythmically feeding them into his face, eyes glazed as if he were mesmerized, his expression an accurate and childlike reflection of the ridiculous on-screen activities of the imbecilic yellow bear. The Funyun/Cheeto combo, Rodney reflected, was a good one, though; Madison’s snack mix of choice, allowable only when sick and/or Daddy was out of town. Not that Rodney had got anything like his fair share, but at least he knew his niece’s tastebuds hadn’t been entirely deadened by endless tofurkey unpleasantness.

Jeannie’s fault, then Jeannie’s fault that Rodney, minding his own business, getting on with the day-to-day, vitally important work of a not-internationally-renowned-for-a-very-good-reason-thank-you-very-much astrophysicist, had become suddenly aware that, though the lab was over-populated by the exact number of scientists that did not answer to the name of Meredith Rodney McKay, Phd, Phd, to wit, Radek Zelenka and Miko Kusanagi, there was none of the usual back-and-forth of twittering inanity that passed for conversation between them. There was, in fact, a significant and all-too-interested silence. A listening silence, as intense as if a deep space antenna was directed and aimed entirely at his particular location in the vastness of the galaxy. And as soon as this focussed regard impinged on Rodney’s consciousness, he became aware that his lips had been moving, were indeed moving still and that the muttered sounds being emitted were unquestionably worthy of scrutiny. Not because of the value of their scientific innovation to the mass of humanity and associated allied species, but, simply, embarrassingly, not to say catastrophically, because, Rodney realised, he’d been singing; under his breath, in a mumbling kind of style, but nevertheless, recognisably singing. Had he been humming the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth? Declaiming Wagnerian leitmotifs? Even mumbling that song listing all the elements? (He’d given rather a fine performance of that song once at grad school, accompanying himself on the piano and making up an extra verse for all the elements recently discovered. In fact, he realised, another verse was long overdue.) The answer to all of his questions was: sadly, no. The music, if one could call it that, being reproduced by a rebel faction of his eclectic memory, was a catchy, bouncy, irritatingly, cloyingly sweet little ditty: the theme tune to the Disney version of Winnie-the-Pooh.

Zelenka’s face wore an arrested, not to say, startled expression.

“What is that you are singing, Rodney?”

“Nothing! I mean, I wasn’t! Singing? Me? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“But, yes, Rodney, certainly you were singing. Wasn’t he?” Zelenka turned to Kusanagi, whose eyes were even larger and rounder behind her large, round lenses than Rodney ever recalled seeing them before; not that he recalled much about her at all, other than her extremely moderate competence. Although, strangely, something was tapping irritatingly at a small trapdoor in his mind.

Miko refused to commit. One corner of her mouth was threatening to rise into a very slight, tremulous smile; Rodney narrowed his eyes at her and she lowered hers and shook her head slightly.

Radek shrugged, as if dismissing the matter, and continued with his work; Rodney was not deceived. That retentive mind would be squirreling away an audio-perfect recording of the illustrious Chief Science Officer of the Ancient city of Atlantis singing the theme tune to Winnie-the-Pooh while working on… what the hell was this stupid thing, anyway? He’d been tinkering with it for an hour with no results forthcoming. Maybe it’d respond if Sheppard fluttered his eyelashes at it. Anyway, yes, Radek. Rodney glanced up from the recalcitrant device; his second-in-command’s expression was impassive, but not for nothing had Zelenka been born and bred in a politically unstable climate. The man had a poker-face worthy of the high stakes tables at Caesar’s Palace; on the inside he was turning cartwheels, bouncing off inflatable ZPMs with unalloyed glee, replaying to himself the words ‘Tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff,’ exactly as they had, quite astoundingly no doubt, emerged from Rodney’s lips, because one thing was for sure – if Rodney was reproducing lyrics, no matter now puerile, he was reproducing them accurately.

He poked the device-thing with a probe, to no avail, and glanced up again. For a single, mortifying second, Rodney found his eyes locked with Miko’s. She looked away, blushing furiously, but for a moment he’d surprised an expression that he’d never seen before on her face: tentative hope. If Rodney had been a very different man, he might have thought ‘sweetly’ tentative hope, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t. He unhooked the device from its tangled network of sensors, untangled them, connected them a different way and tapped at his keyboard to insist on their sensing something different and preferably useful, and all the while his mind worked furiously, determined to grind Kusanagi’s hopeful expression ‘exceeding small’ between the hard granite millstones of his mind. Hope. Hope for what? What right had she to hope, in a lab under the control of Meredith Rodney etc. etc.? If he hadn’t considered the old ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’ to be somewhat hackneyed, it would have been emblazoned in foot-high letters at regular intervals throughout the whole lab complex, so that his minions should better understand their lowly place in his grand scheme.

Then the little mental trapdoor opened and a crucial piece of information slithered forth, which had meant nothing up until this moment, not even registering as worthy of his notice. Rodney recalled that he had been working, very late indeed, so late that it counted as early, although he hadn’t known what the time was and wouldn’t have been interested if he had. Suddenly finding himself in need of another pair of hands and getting no response from Zelenka, he had radioed Miko, who had arrived, just when he was about to explode with frustrated brilliance and, as far as Rodney recalled, had done as he’d directed, with the minimum of stupidity. However, the crucial piece of information that he now recalled, that little nugget of truth that might give a hint as to the reason for that hopeful expression, was this: Miko Kusanagi had been wearing Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas.

The device, Rodney observed, was emitting a low-level energy reading; nothing dangerous, no harmful radiation or anything like that. It was a simple cylinder with various different-sized ports down one side, which had yielded precisely nothing when probed. One end had unscrewed revealing a matrix of small crystals, which had been similarly unforthcoming, no matter how much Rodney coaxed and cajoled them. Maybe it was time for a snack? Get the little grey cells firing on all cylinders again? And then, as a new piece of information occurred to Rodney, the subroutine in his mind that had been busily processing, spat forth a series of results, like a snaking line of paper from an old fashioned tape read-out. Rodney wished he really did have a tangible, paper print-out; he could shred it, or burn it, or shred it then burn it.

Up to now, Miko Kusanagi had existed only on the periphery of Rodney’s increasingly stretched awareness. On some level he had recognised that she had conceived something of a regard for him; an admiration, maybe even what one might call a ‘crush’. Which, in the fairly limited way he had given the matter consideration, he’d taken as his due; after all, what female, or indeed male, scientist wouldn’t admire such a role model of towering intellect, and, he liked to think, physical attractiveness? Fortunately for Rodney, he thought, with hastily-suppressed self-doubt, few of them chose to act on their impulses. It would have been distracting; and inconvenient. So really, he was lucky. Realising he’d already allowed the issue to distract him, Rodney ran to catch up with his train of thought and jumped aboard, determined to ride it to its destination, no matter how outrageous. He had set off on this train because he was hungry (he was still hungry) and his mind had revealed the fact that whenever he was working in a lab where a certain Japanese scientist was also working, he had only to bark impatiently once or twice for a snack to appear, suddenly and discreetly, at his elbow, to be instantly and unthinkingly devoured. Rodney now took the time to think about these mysteriously materialising snacks: honey sandwiches, every one. Miko Kusanagi, she of the Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas and a crush on the CSO so large that she could barely speak in his presence, had been sneakily and underhandedly feeding him honey sandwiches. And then, when his active, twenty-things-at-once mind had betrayed him by employing spare processing capacity to recall the unfortunately archived Winnie-the-Pooh audio file, Miko had input his solecism into her apparently fluffy, Disneyfied mind and had produced a result in the form of hope. Probably not even in respectable binary code.

Rodney’s interpretation of Miko’s crush on him as stemming from the rightful admiration of his vast intellectual superiority underwent a sudden paradigm shift. It wasn’t his mind she admired, it was some kind of image she’d formed of him as her own personal incarnation of that imbecilic bear. For Miko, Meredith Rodney McKay, Phd, Phd, the object of her attraction, was the embodiment of her ideal; the tubby, cubby, willy, nilly, silly (how he wished he didn’t know those words), idiotic old Winnie-the-Pooh.

‘A bear of very little brain’, thought Rodney, bitterly, once more ripping the sensors off the unresponsive artifact. Not even ‘smarter than the average bear’. At least Yogi knew a thing or two about life; how to outwit park rangers and obtain ‘pic-er-nic baskets’ and so on. Winnie-the-Pooh was so stupid he got honey jars stuck on his head and fell down his own heffalump trap. And the company he kept didn’t bear thinking about either; the timid and unresourceful Piglet and the moronically exuberant Tigger. Rodney felt a certain degree of empathy with Eeyore, the chronically pissed-off-beyond-belief donkey. And Kanga; he’d never been fooled by her mawkishly sentimental act. That marsupial momma could seriously kick some ass if she felt like it, and Rodney though she must feel like it pretty often, having to live in close proximity to that parcel of fluff-brained idiots.

A heavy weight landed on Rodney’s workbench suddenly, making it creak. The weight sat, swinging its legs.

“Whatcha doin’, McKay?”

Rodney gritted his teeth.

“Working,” he said, repressively.

“This?” asked John, picking up the cylinder. “Looks a bit like a Thermos. With extra bits,” he added, attempting to poke his finger into the ports. “What does it do?”

“Nothing, as far as I can tell.”

“Oh.” John frowned and glared at the device. “Hmm… It’s not exactly willing, is it?” He frowned again, his brows scrunching together, his lower lip stuck out slightly. Then his expression lightened. “There you go!” he said, handing the device back to Rodney. It looked just the same; no glowing, no flashing, no humming, nothing.

“Where do I go?” responded Rodney. “It’s not doing anything!”

John gave a casually baffled grunt and shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever it does, it’s doing it now. Anyhow, it’s lunchtime, Rodney. Comin’?”

“No!” Rodney replied. “If it’s doing something I need to know what that something is!”

“Oh, well, see you later, then. Radek? Miko? Lunch?”

“Ah, yes, Colonel Sheppard, we will accompany you!” replied Zelenka, enthusiastically.

Rodney, bent over the device, heard some kind of squeak that he took to be Miko’s agreement. They all left. He sighed and rested his head on one hand, imagining the hilarity that would shortly rise to the lofty ceiling of the mess hall. Sheppard would, no doubt, tease him mercilessly. Rodney rubbed his eyes, still leaning with his head close to the cylinder, which seemed to have taken on a strangely hazy sheen. He blinked, but the sheen remained. If John became too insufferable he’d sic Teyla onto him; she’d sort him out in pretty short order. Winnie-the-Pooh, indeed, thought Rodney, scornfully, his mind feeling oddly sluggish. The device taunted him with its smug passivity; he poked at its exposed crystals in retaliation and a swirl of colours danced before his eyes, yellow and red, orange and black, round and round. Rodney blinked, slowly and deliberately, then picked up the cylinder in both hands and held it close to his face.

“Wha-? What’re you…?” he asked it. Then he slithered off his stool onto the floor, still clutching the cylinder, sat in a slumped heap briefly, and then crumpled up, unconscious, the Ancient artifact sliding from his lax fingers and clattering to rest next to his slackly parted lips.


	2. Chapter 2

“One of us,” said Rodney, some time later, is the Wrong Way.” He closed his eyes and then opened them again, but things were just as before. He sat up. “Oh, ha, yes, that solved that, then,” he said, feeling a little foolish. Himself and the room now both being the same way up, he considered his position. “This seems a strange kind of place for a nap,” he said. “Something isn’t right, here.” Rodney scratched his head, his arm feeling oddly short and not up to the job. He looked down at himself; his feet, his legs, his tummy, his red shirt. He waved his arms in front of his face until the blur of yellow made him feel dizzy and even more confused.

“I suppose,” he said to himself, “it’s what comes of being a Bear of Very Little Brain. Sometimes having a head full of fluff makes life difficult.”

“Hello, Pooh.”

“Hello, Piglet,” said Pooh. His brow felt like it was trying to frown, but was too soft to hold the expression. “Have you always worn glasses?”

“Yes, samozřejmě, Pooh. Why are you sitting on the floor?“

Rodney thought hard.

“Either I’m thinking about Life or I’m hungry,” he said eventually. “Or both.”

“I’d go with hungry, Pooh,” said Piglet. “Life’s too big. Especially on an empty stomach. Shall I get you some haycorns?” he offered, helpfully.

“Er…” said Rodney, feeling as if there was something he’d rather have, but temporarily unable to recall its name. He realised that Piglet had scuttled away. “Oh,” said Pooh, disappointed.

A ‘boing’ and a loud thud heralded the arrival of Tigger. Pooh looked up at Tigger; his shock of black hair didn’t seem right, or the holster on his leg, but the eager expression and bouncing, pent-up energy were familiar.

“Hey, Pooh! Whatcha doin’?”

“Being hungry,” said Rodney.

“That’s no fun! Let’s play!” said Tigger. He jumped up and down boisterously. “What shall we do, Pooh? Shall I throw you off something high ‘nd see if you bounce? Shall I shoot you? Shall I?” he said, drawing his pistol and waving it around. “Bang! Bang! Or, we could fight! With thtickth!”

“Thtickth?” repeated Rodney.

“Yeah, thtickth! Whack! Whack!”

Suddenly there were two Tiggers, the one with the messy hair and another, with long, braided ropes coming from between his ears, which swung wildly as he bounced around the room, ricocheting off the walls. The two Tiggers cheerfully hit each other over the head with their sticks, collided and rebounded, merged and split, until Pooh felt it was all Too Much. He closed his eyes and waited.

“If I wait long enough,” he thought ponderously, “it’s bound to come round to a mealtime eventually.”

Outside the darkness of his eyelids it sounded as if the Goings On had stopped Going On. The whacking and bouncing, however, had been replaced by a low-pitched rumbling. Rodney turned his fluff-filled mind to the problem and concluded that the rumbling came from his tummy. He placed both paws over its generous curve and wondered why it felt like there were things moving inside him, when there so clearly and emptily, weren’t.

He sighed a long, hungry sigh and opened his eyes to find himself still on the floor, which was definitely a Bad Thing. He needed somewhere cosy and he needed something to fill his growling tummy and not necessarily in that order. The somewhere cosy was obviously his little house, down amongst the roots of the tree, and now that he turned his really very limited brain to the matter, he had a strong feeling that he might find something tasty stored there. Honey. That was the word. Golden, sticky, rich honey. Rodney scratched his fluffy head. He didn’t think he had a jar of honey at the moment; perhaps a shining, dripping piece of honeycomb?

He rolled tubbily onto all fours prior to pushing himself to his feet. The floor had become familiar and Up There was a long way away and seemed to involve a lot of effort to achieve. Maybe he needed to do more Stoutness Exercises each morning? Or did they just increase stoutness? More rumbling and grumbling came from inside him, so he forced his top half to leave the safety of the floor.

“Honey and home,” he said to himself. “Home and honey.” And he set off, full of purpose.

The hundred-acre wood was a confusing place today. The trees seemed to have gone. Perhaps that meant it was a Sunday. Or a Tuesday. Or something.

Some figures appeared in the distance; dark figures, walking, even marching purposefully. They could be heffalumps. Maybe if he just kept walking, they’d pass him by? Heffalumps were strange, unpredictable creatures; sometimes they would ignore you and continue lumping along, their trunks in the air. Other times, though, they could be Fierce and might Charge. Better to be safe than sorry, thought Rodney; he’d pretend to be a tree, just one among the many trees of the hundred-acre wood. He stopped, faced the wall and stood as still as he could. The heffalumps marched closer. Maybe if he sung a song about being a tree, he’d be more convincing? Er… tree. What rhymes with tree? See? But he didn’t want them to see!

“Dr McKay?”

“Er… tree, you can’t see,” he mumbled.

“Dr McKay, are you alright?”

Bother those heffalumps! Didn’t they know a tree when they saw one?

“Sir?”

He turned, slowly and carefully, so that they wouldn’t charge (although they didn’t really have space to charge and if they decided to, they’d first have to back away to get a run up, and while they were doing that he’d sneak off). There was a row of them, all staring at him.

“Do you need help, Sir?”

“No, thank you very much! I’m just…” His mind was blank; he panicked. “I’m just out, er… hunting heffalumps!”

That was definitely the wrong thing to say to a single heffalump, let alone a herd. He put his hands over his ears so that they wouldn’t see him and scurried away around the corner, then stopped and listened. He couldn’t hear anything at all. He took his paws away from his ears and then he could hear the heffalumps clumping away safely into the distance and then, even more safely, into nothing. Rodney leant against the wall, wearily. More than ever, he wanted his cosy home and his tasty honey. There were Fierce, Wild Animals out here and no trees; something was very wrong. Home; his cosy home, down among the tree roots. Yes, down; that felt right. He found a staircase, which was odd in itself in a forest, but he set off down it anyway.

“Down and down and round and round,” he sang, “Down the tree to reach the ground! That’s where all the honey’s found!” Rodney was pleased with his song, and sang it again several times, until he rounded a corner of the stairs and on the next landing stood Kanga with Roo in her pocket. A large tub of water steamed gently next to her, Things that didn’t look as if they Belonged bobbing on the surface, in amongst the foamy bubbles.

“Hello, Kanga! Hello, Roo!” said Pooh, puffing slightly from the downing, and swaying dizzily from the rounding.

“Hello, Pooh,” said Kanga, leaning forward and attempting to touch her forehead to his. She gave up after a couple of tries, Pooh’s head, still spinning, seeming to dodge her of its own accord. Roo squeaked a greeting.

“What are you doing here, Pooh?”

“Oh, just going home, in a lunchtime-ish kind of way.” He gave her a hopeful look. “I don’t suppose you might have some small item of snackage about you, hmm?”

“I have some tuttle roots,” she offered, gesturing to the bath water.

“Oh, er, I don’t think…” began Pooh.

“Have you had a bath today, Pooh?” Kanga’s eyes narrowed in a way that made Rodney feel that she could see right through his fur and into his fluff.

“Yes! I’m clean! Clean as… the sky… when it’s raining… hard! What are the tuttle roots for?”

“The tuttle roots are my secret ingredient,” she said. “For extra cleanliness. Are you sure you’ve had a bath?”

A welcome distraction arrived in the form of a large, blue balloon, rising slowly up through the centre of the stairwell. As it rose, Pooh saw that it had a string attached, and as it rose further still he saw that the string had a Christopher Robin attached.

“Winnie-the-Pooh!” exclaimed Jennifer, drifting gently upward.

“Hello, Christopher Robin. Did you know you’re flying?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jennifer carelessly. “It wasn’t inte-, intesh-… I didn’t mean to. I found a balloon and blew it up and then this happened.” She leant toward Pooh, as far as her upward progress would allow and said, conspiratorially, “It’s a bit high, actually.”

Once again, Rodney found his face unwilling to hold the concerned expression that this behaviour deserved. Also, there was a tiny piece of fluff stirring in the depths of his mind that he felt had something to say about the balloon-blowing business, but he could only get as far as the sound ‘He’ before it hid from him. Worth a try, though, he thought.

“Hee, hee,” he said. But in the time it had taken this sound to work its way free, Christopher Robin had gone. And when Pooh turned round to continue his journey, he found that Kanga and Roo and the bathtub had gone too.

“Home and honey, honey and home, no more bathtubs, no more foam, no more balloons that want to roam.” He thudded softly down the stairs, feeling that, as ways or getting down stairs went, it had its advantages over being dragged down by one leg, his head bumping rhythmically, but as it meant that he had to do all the work, on the whole he preferred the head-bumping way.

Something stirred in the shadows. Could it be a Hostile Animal?

“Hello?”

“Hello?” came a response.

Pooh rubbed his head with one paw. What a lot of Thinking and Working Out there was today.

“Are you an echo?”

“Am I an echo?”

This didn’t seem quite right. And besides, he thought he recognised the voice.

“Hello, Rabbit. Is that you?”

“Let’s pretend it isn’t,” said Woolsey, “and see what happens.”

Rodney decided to ignore this confusing advice.

“I’m going home for a little, no a large something,” said Pooh. “In fact,” he continued, thoughtfully, “I’m going home for the very largest something I can find. Would you like to come, Rabbit?”

“Oh, no, thank you, Pooh, I have all these reports to write.”

Pooh peered at Rabbit and saw that he did look very busy and businessy, with his glasses and tie and collar and the sheafs of paper spilling out of his arms.

“Can you write, Rabbit? I write things in my head, but when I try to arrange them on the paper the letters get tangled and words go in the wrong places.” He looked at his paws. “I think they get stuck in my fur. It’s the honey, you know,” he said, sadly. There was no response, and when he looked up, Rabbit had disappeared.

“Oh, well,” said Pooh, resigned to being alone. He continued: down and down and round and round until he had to stop, his furry yellow paws clinging to the railing, his head spinning. “It’s all Too Much for a bear of very little brain,” he said to himself. “Honey and home, home and honey, that will make it right.”

And, at long last, feeling like a traveller returning from an epic journey of at least, oh, two whole miles, he arrived at the door to his home. A cosy glow reached out to him, welcoming him in. Rodney entered, his poor old tummy feeling very empty indeed.

“Even bears of very little brain are good at some things,” he said, his paws pressing here and there, without his tired, fluffy head having to do any thinking at all. And there was his honeycomb, rising out of its little nest all shining bright with beautiful, golden honey. Rodney picked it up and it stopped glowing as brightly, but that was quite alright because it was still his beautiful honeycomb and he loved it. He cuddled it to his chest, knowing it would make him sticky, but thinking the stickiness would be pleasant and lickable so that was quite alright too. The floor seemed to want to make friends, so he sank down to say hello, while sucking at one of the pointy bits of the honeycomb, and it didn’t matter that everything was the Wrong Way again, because both he and the honeycomb were the same way and, he thought, an afternoon nap is always welcome after a large lunch.

A face appeared above him. A face with very large, round eyes: Owl.

“H’llo, Owl,” he said, drowsily. “You want some h’ny?”

Owl said something that his ears couldn’t catch and Rodney closed his eyes, knowing that Owl was very wise and always knew What To Do and correct proseedcakes and things like that. He relaxed into dreams of the sweetness of honey and the sweetness of home.


	3. Chapter 3

Rodney felt sick. Maybe… no. No, he definitely wasn’t hungry. His head hurt and the phrase, ‘Bear with a sore head’ danced through his mind, which brought everything flooding back. He groaned.

“Hey, Rodney.” Sheppard’s voice. “How’re you feeling?” Rodney groaned again, which John seemed to take as encouragement to continue. “Like a…”

“Don’t say it,” said Rodney, croakily. “If you value your life.”

He opened his eyes, carefully, but the light was dim and soft. John sat by the bed. Rodney prepared himself for the onslaught of the teasing. If he’d had the energy, he would have covered his face with both hands. Heffalumps. Lorne and his men. And he’d pretended, unconvincingly, to be a tree. Had he sung?

“Oh, God, no!”

“Here.” 

Rodney felt a cup held to his lips and he drank.

“Sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.” Rodney opened his eyes again and John was doing that awkward rubbing at the back of his neck thing he did. “I activated that thing and then just left you to it.”

“That thing?”

“The Thermos thing. It… um… It wasn’t keen and I kinda forced it and Jennifer said…” He took a guilty breath. “Jennifer said it was a medical appliance and the resistance was a kind of a lock that I broke and it was a type of gas used for anaesthesia. And, huh, you, er, had a bad reaction. And they had to cordon off your lab after, er, after Zelenka went in there and then decided he was a pigeon.”

John looked down at his feet. Rodney noticed a lump in the next bed, Zelenka’s characteristic unkempt tuft sticking over the top of the blankets.

“Oh,” he said, with interest dampened by his headache. His eyes focussed on the nightstand, on which stood a very homemade-looking card and several jars, the jars a distinctive style that the Athosians used for their honey. Hmm… He squinted at the card. The picture was a pencil sketch of Winnie-the-Pooh and Owl. Miko. Rodney’s already queasy stomach lurched. So, Zelenka might have done a bit of flapping and cooing? That was nothing to the ZPM cuddling and sucking that Miko had witnessed!

“How did you know…?”

“Oh, well, Lorne told me you were being a bit… unusual.”

“So, you came looking for me?”

“Ah, well, no, I just kinda put that down to, you know, you being you?”

“Thanks,” said Rodney, happy with the level of sarcasm he could pack into a single word, even suffering from a sore head and an upset stomach. “Didn’t Lorne say anything about the…?”

“The heffalumps? Well, yeah, but it was meatloaf day, so… I should say sorry again, shouldn’t I? Anyway, my first real clue was the citywide blackout when you pulled the ZPM.”

“Huh, yes, that’d be a bit of a giveaway.”

“But Miko must have been on your trail before that,” said John. “I guess she picked up on the whole heffalump issue. She found you.” His voice took on a suspicious drawl. “She _said_ that you were trying to run a diagnostic on the flow of power from the ZPM when you passed out.”

“I don’t remember,” Rodney said, determinedly. He picked up the card and looked inside. ‘To Dr McKay, with best wishes for a speedy recovery from Miko Kusanagi,’ it said, formally. He considered the picture of the bear and the owl once more. It was rather well-drawn, he thought. Perhaps in future he’d try to determine the sandwiches’ exact point of arrival and say thank you. He placed the card back on the nightstand.

“You’d better get some more sleep,” said John.

Rodney grunted an affirmative and closed his eyes. As he drifted back into to his not-too-unpleasant-considering-the-kind-of-day-he’d-had dreams, he felt a brief pat on his shoulder and the murmured words, “Silly old bear.” But such was the tone of affection, that he couldn’t find it in either his still-quite-fluffy head, or heart to protest.


End file.
